I have owned this boat for approx. 1 year and have found it to be an excelent sailor and will move in the slightlest breeze regardless of its relativly heavy displacement. It has a solid feel and a smooth motion in seas. I am interested in contacting other owners of this model. Please e-mail me at bergbmw@attbi.com

We am the owner of "Sailors Joy", Nor'West 33 hull #4, located in Port Ludlow, WA. We have owned the boat for 2 years and are very fond of it. I have extensively updated and repaired it as it was pretty rough when we got it. I have had 5 articles accepted in "Good Old Boat" magazine on this repair/updating which will be published next year (2004). My boat was actually bought as a demo by the dealer in Des Moines, WA and sailed and raced by him from 1979 until his death in 2001, so we are only the second owners.

The Nor'West 33 is a great boat, although several design flaws make it less than ideal to work on. Among other things I have replaced the engine with a new Volvo 2020, replaced the fuel tank and cabin sole, replaced the cabin overhead, refinished and rewired the mast, installed a new holding tank, head and plumbing, added a kerosene heater, built a breaker panel and rewired major portions of the boat. I have also added a Nexus 3000 instrument system, a plotting GPS, battery charger, all new lights, rebuilt the mast step, opened up the prop aperture, and repaired about 1000 small blisters. I have also added a Profurl furling system, self-tailing winches and run almost all the lines from the mast to the cockpit. I updated the autopilot by replacing the Benmar control head with an Autohelm, utilizing the original Benmar rotary drive unit. I have added a dodger, replaced most of the exterior teak trim, built a cockpit grating and added pinrails on the lower stays. I just complete a spinnaker sock and will convert several more sails to RF shortly (I have converted 2 so far). I have cut several access ports to the back of the engine, the steering and the prop shaft thru the cockpit floor.

The boat is a great sailor and will sail herself to windward forever with the wheel locked. It has a very easy motion and light helm. It doesn't develop excessive weather helm as the wind increases as do most fin keel boats. A bad point is that it will not turn as sharply as a fin keeler, making manuvering in a marina a little more difficult. It also backs very poorly, as do all keel boats with the prop in a aperture. The access to the engine with the original Yanmar 2QM20 was impossible but it is very good with the much smaller Volvo engine I installed.

Overall, it is a great boat, right up there with the Cape Dory 33, Sea Sprite 34 and similar boats. We will spend several months cruising locally this summer in the Pacific NW and hope to take it to Alaska next summer.

I just purchased "Imzadi" Nor'West 33 hull number 7. The boat is basically sound but has been somewhat neglected. I am just starting to assess what needs to be done to upgrade the boat to full cruising condition for a planned voyage to Mexico in 2007 or 2008. I'd appreciate any advice from other owners. One thing I am curious about is whether the head can be modified for use as a shower? Peter at pxo2@pge.com

I'm the owner of Catbird, hull #9 and am trying to get an updated list of Nor'west 33 owners. Any current owners interested in sending me their info please email me at Kris@konawalik.com

As far as a review goes, the Nor'west 33 is a solid boat that sails well, but has a few areas that need to be either fixed or payed close attention. These areas include mast step, fuel tank, and rudder. The mast step was fabricated from plain steel and will eventually fail. The fuel tank on a few of the boats has corroded through. I assume because of the thin walled standard aluminum that was used. The rudder post does not go very deep into the rudder and the hinge points wear or break free because of some weird composite material that was used (I have not heard of any owners losing steerage while underway and hopefully it will stay that way). So far for Catbird, the mast step had been replaced by the previous owner, the fuel tank has held together so far, and I have added a new rudder post that goes a bit deeper and capped the out of round composite hinges with silicon bronze caps and add new delrin bushings. The next project is a new custom mast collar on the cabin top. For some reason the mast collar shape is different from the mast, causing the mast to touch off on the collar in one area. I know they used a few different mast collars during production but am not sure if the rig itself varied.